Automation in E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops (1909) and Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (1952): A Comparative Study.
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Date
2021-12
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Mouloud Mammeri University OF Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
This research is a comparative study that examines automation in E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops (1909) and Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (1952). It argues that the misuse and misapplication of technology leads to the triumph of automation and the denigration of man as well as society. To carry out this research paper, Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1929) and Neil Postman’s Technopoly : The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992) stand as the theoretical framework. The analysis of this paper shows three main findings. Firstly, man’s irrationality is a result of his blind belief in automation and distrust in his social and cultural tenets. Secondly, the exaggerated automation leads to man’s enslavement since the machine takes man’s jobs and controls him. Last but not least, man’s irrational behavior and the machine’s control merge into a third complex aspect which is man’s inhuman treatment of his fellow men. Forster and Vonnegut stress the importance of a return to the abandoned social and cultural organisms amid the technological boom
Description
57p. ; 30cm.+(cd)
Keywords
E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops(1909), Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano (1952), automation, Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (1929), Neil Postman, Technopoly : The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992).
Citation
General and Comparative Literature